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parents were away on a cruise, his agent had told Edie, so he’d opted to stay here rather than a hotel. She added lots of strenuous caveats about not disclosing this address to anyone, which offended Edie, as if she was going to go on Reddit and post GUESS WHAT, GUYS.

      The cabinet shelves displayed childhood portraits in chunky silver frames. Elliot had been, as expected, an angelic-looking little boy, marble skin and molasses-dark hair. Edie could see how he’d got a role as a Celt warrior.

      His younger brother was completely dissimilar, as Meg was to Edie – blond, stouter, blunter of features, still handsome.

      ‘… that a threat? Are you serious? Take him then, I honestly don’t care what your fork-tongued friends say about it, do you? Huh, clearly. Wait, WAIT. So on one hand you’re saying you’ll have to take him if I don’t show, as if that’s going to cause me to kick off, but I’m an uncaring bastard for not kicking off? What kind of stupid trap is – oh really, Heather. Have a word with yourself.’

       Yeah, maybe she has a word with herself and you have a word with me, how does that work for you?

      Edie deduced the argument had something to do with Elliot not dropping everything and attending Heather’s birthday in New York, and Heather’s subsequent threats to arrive on someone else’s arm. It sounded like it had turned into a full-scale ‘you never put me first’ which showed no signs of burning out any time soon. Edie checked her watch. She’d been here twenty minutes. Tick-tock.

      She could check her phone. She did some listless scrolling, although with no Facebook and no friends, there wasn’t much to distract her. She’d not looked at Twitter in an age. With a jolt, she saw some abuse on there: messages from Lucie and probably friends of Lucie asking her how she could sleep at night. Edie quickly shut it down: not now. She read news sites, she did flower doodles on her notepad, and tried not to think about how the number of people who reviled her was enough to fill a village hall, with garden overspill.

      The beautiful people and their imaginary problems saga continued next door. She checked her watch. Forty-five minutes. This was turning Naomi Campbell – and not only that, he was on the bloody premises. It was perfectly within his power to end the call.

      At fifty-two minutes, when Edie’s chest was tight in irritation with his manners, Elliot went quiet, banged about for a few seconds, then entered the room.

      He flopped down on the sofa and barely looked at her. Edie waited for an apology about keeping her waiting, none was forthcoming. Anger was a useful cure for awe, anyway.

      ‘Hi, I’m Edie,’ Edie said, and ran into an instant roadblock. You usually introduced yourself to get a name in return. Given she patently didn’t need one, it left the line dangling.

      ‘Hi. Yeah. This project. I don’t know whether Kirsty spoke to you. I really don’t want to do it.’

      Edie summoned courtesy with some effort and said: ‘Oh. I thought we were meeting up because you wanted to do it?’

      ‘Nah, my agent signed me up for it. I really don’t see the point. The whole thing is just an exercise in ego.’

      Hahahhahaha and you hate indulging your ego, I can tell, thought Edie.

      ‘Soo … should I tell them it’s off? Or … should you?’

      ‘We’ve done all the paperwork, so it’s going to be a pain in the arse. Can you just draft as much as you can without me for the time being, and I’ll take a look?’

      Oh right, so you want the money but you won’t do the work. This is just BRILLIANT. Next time anyone told Edie they fancied Elliot Owen, she wouldn’t make the Trainee Barista coffee joke, she’d throw one over them.

      ‘I can draft something but it really needs your input. I was told the publisher wants, uhm, real meat.’

      Elliot had been rubbing his eyes and they suddenly snapped open in a not-very-friendly way, like she’d poked a crocodile with a stick.

      ‘“Real meat”? What the hell does that mean?’

      ‘Er …? Things that haven’t been anywhere else, I suppose.’

      ‘Gossip and generally invading my private life? No fucking way. I knew this was a disaster.’ He said this to an invisible third party, instead of Edie, although she felt entirely invisible.

      ‘We could work on what we wanted to leave out and …’

      ‘No no no. This is trashy.’

      In another time, and another place, when she hadn’t been shredded by humiliation, flattened by shame, involuntarily thrown back to her home city and forced into a bruising encounter with a truculent narcissist, Edie might’ve handled this more diplomatically. As it was, she was boiling with fury.

      ‘I don’t understand your attitude. You’ve signed off on this and presumably accepted the money. The idea is you collaborate with me and we both get a good book out of it.’

      Elliot’s eyes widened and she felt she finally had his attention, at least.

      ‘Oh yeah, you’re going to write a good book. C’mon. We both know this is one of those hack job cash-ins you see in the bargain bin at the supermarket. Like Danny Dyer’s A Cheeky Blighter or whatever.’

      Edie could think of a few titles for Elliot’s right now.

      ‘Well it’s definitely going to be a hack job if you won’t be interviewed properly.’

      Elliot ran a hand through his hair and again appeared to look offstage to some imaginary PR handler.

      ‘Sorry for your disappointment.’

      Edie was humiliated, and spoke before she thought.

      ‘This isn’t disappointment, it’s anger at having to work with someone being completely unprofessional. And spoiled.’

      ‘Woah!’ Elliot’s eyes were round.

      Edie had gone too far and they both knew it.

      ‘This must be the rapport-building phase to win the subject’s trust,’ Elliot said. ‘Tell you what …’ a pause here while he realised he couldn’t remember her name, ‘I think we’ve established this isn’t going to work.’

      He got to his feet and pulled his stripy grey jumper over his flat stomach.

      ‘Great meeting, thanks a lot.’

      ‘Yeah, thanks a lot,’ Edie said, with similar sarcastic intonation, and briskly showed herself out, to spare him the effort he wasn’t going to make.

       18

      What a wanker! Would you believe it? What an utterly intergalactic astrotwat.

      Edie was already replaying lines from that brief encounter in her head, almost chuntering quotes out loud in the street, in the way of deeply indignant people.

      Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she slipped it out. Richard. Her rage march to the nearest bus stop was stopped in its tracks. She let the call ring out and saw the words New Voicemail appear ominously on the screen.

      It would be a check in, a ‘how are you getting on’. I had a row with him and the project is cancelled, Edie imagined herself saying. Oh, and his agent might hear I was … forthright.

      She swallowed hard. That would be an awful conversation. Even worse than the one about the wedding. Then, she hadn’t owed Richard quite as much. He had since taken pity on her and extended her this lifeline. She knew he wanted to keep her, not Jack – it was Edie he liked, Jack, not so much, and Richard always said employing people you liked was good business sense. He’d maybe even choose Edie over Charlotte, if it came to a her-or-me

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